Look inside a giant supernova that seeded the universe

If this was a scan of your brain, you’d have one fiery headache. It’s actually a slice of a simulated primordial star, giving us a peek at what might have happened as it died.

Most massive stars explode in a supernova when they exhaust their fuel, leaving behind a neutron star or a black hole. But the first stars were much larger than their modern-day counterparts, about 55,000 times the mass of the sun, and may have had a different fate.

These very large stars could actually be totally obliterated, seeding their entire host galaxy and even some nearby galaxies with elements ranging from carbon to silicon and leaving nothing at all behind.

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This image shows the helium core of a star just one day into such an explosive finish. Nuclear reactions are converting helium into oxygen, powering the swirling instabilities that ripple through the star.